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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27838477">we carried on (here comes the sun)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/jinxxedbun/pseuds/jinxxedbun'>jinxxedbun</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>ragnarök: kairos [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Supernatural</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Canon Compliant, Episode Fix-It: s15e20 Carry On, Episode: s15e20 Carry On, F/F, F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, Healing, Heaven, John Winchester’s A+ parenting, M/M, Other, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Post-War, Romance, THE MF NAIL, best worst ending i've ever seen, canon ending but good, destiel is canon hello, gratuitous intertextual references, rowena/sam only if u squint</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 20:41:41</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>11,416</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27838477</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/jinxxedbun/pseuds/jinxxedbun</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>There are suds clinging up to his elbows and an oversized dog napping by the foot of his leg, lulled by the soft chords of yet another chill evening playlist humming from Alexa. Out the back window, his four-month pregnant wife laughs beneath the languid glow of a particularly warm summer, kicking a soccer ball around with their two and a half kids in their picket fenced yard. Oh, he thinks fondly, of the places you'll go.</p><p>Somewhere lost to time, two grizzled, mostly-retired warriors attempt to sculpt something that’s beginning to resemble a home.</p><p>A story about how life kept ticking long after they thought it stopped; a tale of two parts.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Castiel/Dean Winchester, Eileen Leahy/Sam Winchester, John Winchester/Mary Winchester, Kaia Nieves/Claire Novak, Rowena MacLeod/Sam Winchester</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>ragnarök: kairos [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2037667</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>100</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>we carried on (here comes the sun)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>playlist:</p><p>ride – lana del rey<br/>ends of the earth – lord huron<br/>the weight – the band</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p>--</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong> <em> “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.”</em> </strong>
</p><p> </p><p>---</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>In the beginning, time loses all sense—it comes and it goes in fits and starts.</p><p>Most days Sam jerks his head up to the creaking of a door swinging on its hinges, always expecting a familiar face to walk through, the ghosts of yesteryears marking their presence, but—</p><p>No one ever tells you the worst part of loss is not in the moment the world splits, but in all that comes after.</p><p>It is in the instinctual calling of his brother’s name as Sam trips over clothes strewn onto the ground after his return from the hunt of Dean’s <em>other other</em> phone. It is in the non-vegan bacon that grows old and rotten in the fridge. It’s the taunting of the empty spaces that once held living souls, the ringing silence that wraps like a noose until he’s struggling to breathe.</p><p>Yet, this isn’t a feeling that rolls around unfamiliar in him. It wasn’t the first, or even second time he’s had to carry out this lonely practice of mourning his only kin.</p><p>So, robotically, Sam goes through the motions.</p><p>He begins with putting all the tomes, the relics, back into order. He clears the dungeons, the tools shined spotless and hung sharply in their display racks, implements reset to their original positions. He wipes down the kitchen counters, cleans out the stove tops. He throws out all the food in the fridges, the cupboards filled with snacks, canned food, dried pasta, some spices. Any alcohol he drinks until he’s spread out spinning on the ground, cursing the universe, <em>Chuck, </em>for this wretched existence.</p><p>He ignores any time the phone rings – case or friend – he can’t bring himself to return their calls.</p><p>Slowly, he lets the grind of his tasks ground him; basks in the small comfort of movement in the face of stagnation.</p><p>And when all is cleared and no corner unturned—like the fresh salting of a wound, he bracingly charters his way to Dean’s shut room<em>. </em></p><p>He again spots the hung up guns, the unmade bed. The treasure trove of notepads, books, magazines splayed haphazardly across his desk and the empty beer bottles that litter the corner space. Not an inch moved from when he was here last, and something ugly inside him breaks.</p><p><em>These cuts,</em> Sam thinks, as he is falling onto Dean’s bed to the scent of gun oil and unwashed sheets, wayward cookie crumbs scratching beneath his skin, <em>are what kills you.</em></p><p>The daily reminders of everything taken for granted; the somber realization that life in its constant, perpetual motion is in itself a startling gift.</p><p>He doesn’t know how long he lies there, taking in the unkempt room, the way his brother radiates through its every square inch. With bleary vision and a sinking gut, he gathers the remainders of Dean’s clothes, shoes. Phones stashed into boxes and weapons strewn across the room. He scavenges the yellowing pictures and seals them into an album bought from the corner gas station over. Despondently munches on a bag of candy hidden in the bedside drawer.</p><p>When he yanks open the shallow wooden closet next to the still metal fan on top of the dresser, it is to an explosion of black shirts and multicolored flannel.</p><p>Quietly, on hooks attached to the opening frame hangs a pristine yellow trench coat under a dirty green shirt. Sam carefully lifts the shirt off it's place, stiff with suspension, and sees the stained handprint on its shoulder, the rusty specks of dried blood.</p><p>Dean had never told him exactly what happened in that room with the ministering angel that once gave him back his brother. But he knows Dean by now. He remembers Dean’s shell-shocked expression that dragged through the weeks. The swirling regret lurking in its depths when he thought Sam wasn’t looking—the cosmic horror.</p><p>His fingers blindly reach up to grab bunches of clothes off their rails, tosses them into black oversized trash bags that pile high in the corridor.</p><p>He thinks back to all the nights the three of them thought the world would end and it didn’t—the hushed conversations the two of them used to have under their breaths, far away enough that they thought he couldn’t hear, leaned into one another with eyes that unknowingly looked like there was something right at the edge of its precipice that they would lose. He remembers excusing himself with mumbled explanations of an early night, but really, he just felt like his presence was an intrusion into the <em>something </em>that had been building since the angel first appeared.</p><p>Sam cuts the memories off before they completely unravel themselves. With practice, he flicks around his mind for a topic, then like a mantra, mentally goes through a list of all the different—burial rituals this time—that he’s amassed over the years.</p><p>He comes back to himself tossing the vestiges of a snipped life into the raging bonfire, plumes of smoke warping all his brother left behind. He thinks how he's never met a ghost who really wanted to know how their body, things, were dealt with after they died—funerals after all are for the poor bastards left alive.</p><p>The coat and the shirt are thrown in last—he will have other mementos of them—but those were never his part.</p><p> </p><p>---</p><p> </p><p>When the burning can’s contents is finally reduced to cinders, Sam knows it is his turn to leave the bunker.  </p><p>His footsteps echo around empty chambers as he walks up those clanging steps putting the now untouched space on standby. In stop motion, the library, tables, telescope all disappear from view like the passing of a distant dream; lights flickering out one by one as darkness takes over his vision once more on this familiar sequence.</p><p>Locking the gate behind him, he can’t help but wonder who its next inhabitants may be, and what they may wonder about those who came before. He thinks of the carved initials on the wooden table, their mark in this home that is no longer his home, and the way even that too will eventually surrender to the entropy of the universe.</p><p>Sam tosses everything he owns into the backseat of the Impala and pulls his brother’s car down that shady, winding road, onto the highway, and out of this god-forsaken town of Lebanon, Kansas.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <em>---</em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Frighful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap</em>
</p><p>
  <em>May who ne’er hung there.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>And I have asked to be</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Where no storms come.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>---</em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  
</p><p>He drives mindlessly and tires quickly that first day. He goes in and out from town to town, a wandering vagabond. He doesn’t take leads, doesn’t stop to talk. He drives in, eats, sleeps, eats—drives out. </p><p>The town and cities slowly begin to bleed and blend into one another like the colors of an impressionist painting and before he notices, warm fall browns decay into winter greys and he’s chasing the dwindling sun. Days that grow ever shorter and nights ever colder sweep through the lands, and just as he thinks he’s about to be pulled into the permafrost, he somehow finds himself knocking at Eileen’s door, wondering if this is how Dean had felt dragging himself to Lisa’s once on a long lost shot.</p><p>He distantly hears the jingle of locks as the door creaks open, her startled gasp, and he is collapsing into her arms as if his legs no longer have the strength to carry him on.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <em>---</em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>They struggle to live a normal life.</p><p>There are days he wakes up shaking, nights her nails dig a little deeper into his chest at a dream that wasn’t once just dream. Occasionally, a tidal wave crashes that leaves him clutching to the back of a chair, until the moment passes, and he breaks through the rush.</p><p>He picks back up yoga, centering himself to his breathing, the feeling of his palms pushing flat onto the spinning earth. She makes her way through stacks and stacks of unread books: all cliché romances and detective thrillers and nothing remotely supernatural.</p><p>Sam even dedicates himself to learning sign language though a string of YouTube videos and classes from the town’s local center, while Eileen cheekily teaches him all the colorful phrases he needs to know.</p><p>They see spring budding in her yard together as they plant hyacinths and strawberries and scallions, a meager effort to root themselves into the steady beat of continuity. They air out the dusty pillows, wipe the hardwood floors, work tentatively in tandem to fix the broken pieces of the rented house.</p><p>And when the urge to kill hits a little too hard, or the feeling of <em>having to do something </em>upon reading about a string of missing kids chafes a little too deep, Sam and Eileen silently pack the trunk of her red ‘71 Plymouth Valiant to drive off to a town in need of saving. For a brief moment of glorious respite, they watch their demons roll across the floor instead of festering in their minds.</p><p>Together, they grow and they mend with time.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>---</em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>In the first year after the war, Sam and Eileen keep to themselves.</p><p>By the second, they begin to emerge from their cocoon, metamorphosed.</p><p>They see their friends, old and new. They take week-long road trips planned around visiting touristy sights: New York, D.C, Chicago—all the major cities that Dean never liked.</p><p>Sam is there when Patience graduates high school.</p><p>He’s there when Claire and Kaia get married in the late spring chill of South Dakota, by the glow of fireflies and candles under starry skies.</p><p>They vow for richer or poorer, sickness, health, to love and cherish until death parts. Claire wears the moment like a fairy wearing a crown, spinning in newlywed glory, laughing in a way Sam didn’t know her face still knew how to shape around the intensity.</p><p>“You did good, kid” he chokes out as they slow dance to the tune of an old corny love song, guitar whinnying its way through the reticent speakers. “They would be so proud.”</p><p>He doesn’t mention those lost—the ones shared, the ones wronged. But she solitarily nods with eyes that glimmer in moonlight as she leans a little closer into his ear.</p><p>“I wish it got easier,” Claire whispers, breathy like a prayer, a confession to which there is no absolution.</p><p>Their names never leave their lips as they dance and they twirl. </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>---</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>“To all things there is a limit set—to sleep, to love, sweet songs, and gorgeous dancing.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>A man would rather have his fill of these, not war.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>But Trojans here are gluttons for a fight.”</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>---</em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  
</p><p>Bit by bit without them really deciding it, the hunts edge quietly down until they’re further and further in between.</p><p>Unknowingly, Sam and Eileen settle into each other, into themselves. Sam eventually goes back to school, University of Chicago, where he elects to study a mix of history and anthropology. He goes for morning runs and eats kale salads. Binges all the shows shoved onto his Netflix queue, listens to one too many motivational Ted Talks. </p><p>They sign their real names on a lease for an apartment in the city at the same time Eileen picks up a volunteer shift at the local center for deaf kids.</p><p>“To nurture, after all the killing I’ve done,” Eileen tells Sam one hazy night over shared bottles of red wine and memories of her past. In return he regales her with stories of his brother, memories of Dean held preciously close. He tells her of the small boy forced to grow too fast watching their father wither away to the bare shell of a man. The hits he took, literally, metaphorically, in his stead; <em>the only job you’ll ever have. </em>He tells her a tale of love and sacrifice, of a hungry child soldier whose heart was too big for this strange, cruel world and the vengeful drill sergeant who stabbed it in the name of destiny.</p><p>Sam tells her about the twists Mary's life took, the mother he had once never known. He tells her how meeting Mary was like meeting a character from a well-worn book, only to realize that the author had it wrong from the start. He tells of Mary’s spirit and bravery, but also her selfishness, greed, humanity. How knowing her at all was one of the few things for which he was thankful.</p><p>Mostly, he tells her how he wishes he could’ve given Dean more time.</p><p>She wants to ask, she almost asks, about an angel in a trench coat and a lost magical boy.</p><p>But Sam’s inebriated voice is already quietly drifting off as his eyes flutter shut on the sectional in their living room, throw blanket wrapped tightly around his frame in the witching hours of a Chicago morning.</p><p><em>Perhaps</em>, she sleepily thinks, curling into his side, <em>that’s a tale left for another time.</em></p><p> </p><p> </p><p>---</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Eventually, like the unraveling of a tightly wound knot, Sam starts to write. He writes in the late evenings by a bottle of beer, whiskey on the colder northern nights, with his glasses perched over his nose and his fingers dancing over an ever aging typewriter. He writes of all the things he told her, and all that he didn’t.</p><p> </p><p>For better or worse, the story is finally his and his alone.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>---</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <em> “Another lover hits the universe. The circle is broken. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>But with death comes rebirth.</em>
</p><p> </p><p><em>And like all lovers and sad people, </em> <em>I am a poet.”</em></p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <em>---</em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Sam makes his way down the hallowed halls, demon lackey unhappily leading the way. His eyes quietly take in the dark mahogany panels, ornate designs carved into its glistening surfaces lit by the flame of everlasting candles. He chuckles despite himself, but trust her to make even this place once of concrete and steel, rusted blood stains and falling rock, to seem oddly inviting.</p><p>“You really upgraded this pigsty, huh?” his mouth crooking up at the demon’s pompous sniff, a hand pushing open the ajar door at the end of the corridor to reveal a lady at her round table—dress of a plunging neckline and midnight blue satin.</p><p>Her voice comes brightly bouncing back, light and tinkling, a warmth from beyond these cursed walls.</p><p>“Of course, <em>darling</em>. Did you really expect otherwise?”</p><p>He grins. “Hello, Rowena.”</p><p>“My protégé,” she laughs liltingly. “Good to see you haven’t forgotten everything.”</p><p>He smiles at her again but there’s something shallow, painful in its attempt. Her eyes soften as the humanity bleeds through. </p><p>“Come, come. Sit.”</p><p>“Leave us, Edmund. I will not be disturbed today,” she adds imperiously. The lanky man acquiesces in deference, bowing his leave and firmly shutting the heavy set door behind.</p><p>Sam walks deeper into the decadently draped room. Flashes of bygone eras merging with turn of the century sophistication; priceless antiques shipped across the Old World’s oceans sit silent next to modern masterpieces and contemporary curves.</p><p>They are silent as she uncovers the afternoon snacks and measures a cup of steeping Earl Grey for the each of them. Nothing but the clink of porcelain and falling grains of sugar to litter the passing minutes. Lacquered nails wrap around an exquisite piece of Victorian china, milk streaming seamlessly with the precision of a weathered witch.</p><p>“So,” her mouth twists carefully over the word, endlessly twirling a silver teaspoon. She deliberately slides a cup and saucer over, lemon snaps on the side, bearing herself for the spiraling world in its aftermath. “Tell me everything.”</p><p>Sam looks up lost, shoulders hunching to his head. With a helpless shrug the tale messily comes tumbling out.</p><p>God—His children, blessed angels that are but mortal men. Of a parent who loved one child too much, the other not enough; both eternally damned. The tired, age old story of how sins of the father become the sins of their sons.  </p><p>He speaks of the sacrifices Jack was willing to make, the prodigal grandchild, demigod risen from beyond the grave.</p><p>
  <em>For he shall inherit the earth one day. </em>
</p><p>He tells her of Dean, of Castiel—the circumstances of his brother’s demise, a hopeful speculation of the angel’s fate.</p><p>She gives Sam a half-grin. “At least they’ll probably—“</p><p>“Yeah,” he mutters, a crooked smile.</p><p>Somewhere above, the early afternoon bleeds into late evening as tea and biscuits lapses into whiskey, barrel aged in the pulsing depths of Hell.</p><p>In the drawing room where shadows dance, an unlikely pair speaks quietly of a time of war, brought together by how guilt has a way of squirming into those who get out.</p><p>“Samuel,” she intones when goodbye finally beckons and Sam rises to depart. “Best we not make this a regular occurrence. After all, the living must <em>live</em>.”</p><p>A weary stare catches tired eyes.</p><p>“I know,” Sam nods, the terse of his jaw tightens. “I know—believe me.”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>---</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>“It seems to me that the gods are cruel to women who eat fruit, </em>
</p><p>
  <em>but that is a thought I keep to myself.”</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>---</em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Sam and Eileen eventually honeymoon in Ireland where she shows him the places she grew up—her childhood home, Lilian’s in the days after. There is the school that she attended and the bar where she first got drunk. The bench where she sits to visit the grave of her parents.</p><p>When they return to America, they do so to a new home in California where Sam drives his electrical car to his job at the university teaching classical lore to a bunch of wide eyed kids not quite turned adults.</p><p><em>It’s dumb, </em>he tells himself, but something about starting his life over back here in his forties feel right—like he’s somehow moving on, coming to his own.</p><p>On the day he returns home to find Eileen sitting at the dining table staring glassy eyed at the muted yellow wall, he feels his stomach sink and braces himself for the worst, for the other shoe to finally drop. But, she holds up a positive pregnancy test and signs with shaking hands like her voice is failing her and before he knows it Sam is picking her up and spinning her across the room. </p><p>“Oh God,” he bends down to rasp in the home he has made from the caverns of her shoulders. “Oh my God.”</p><p>They have a child. The first time Sam looks at their baby he feels his world shift on its axis and he is tethered by the overwhelming force that jolts through his heart. Yet, a terror grows in him, larger than any monster or god or demon he’s ever faced; a terror his parents and their parents before them felt—reaching back to as old as life itself.</p><p>He’s read all the parenting books he could get his hands on and watched all the videos he could find, but he still doesn’t quite know how this fear will pass. But later that Thursday evening, as he gently cradles his newborn son, his mind quietly drifts back to dingy carpeted motel rooms and cheap takeout dinners and Dean in the midst of it all—a feeling of safety that all the evil in the world couldn’t reach.</p><p> </p><p>---</p><p> </p><p>A couple years later, when baby Dean is no longer a baby but a happy-go-lucky kid—Sam and Eileen decide to have a second. Another boy. Little Dean stares at the baby in wide eyed wonder as his father informs him that this crying, squirmy thing is his baby sibling—that he’s going to be a big brother for the rest of his life.</p><p>He does not speak about duty or responsibility.</p><p>He wonders what will come to them in time.</p><p>---</p><p> </p><p>Garth and his family pop into town for a visit on two separate occasions, each time with yet another kid. The twins, Sam and Castiel, aren’t exactly babies anymore—mischievous as imps and thick as thieves—two scrambling balls of chaos and ear-splitting screams.</p><p>Donna stays swinging like a firecracker, leaving a long list of men she never took to quite like she took to hunting. </p><p>Alex eventually gets married too—a kind doctor on her evening shift that looks at her with all the devotion in the world.</p><p>Claire and Kaia keep on the road. They drive in and out of picturesque postcard towns killing monsters as they go. And it would probably be enough. But, at Jody’s insistence, they learn to take breaks, to breathe between the hunts. They go to local fairs and traveling carnivals between diner dates and breakfasts spreads in fancy hotels. If you asked them if they were happy they would probably say that they weren’t the kind to do happy—but one hard look at their strange version of Bonnie and Clyde and you could tell.</p><p>Patience decides, after a long meandering talk with Sam, that perhaps, college might just be for her after all. Her relationship with her father is shaky most days, but they are willing to try. And when she finally graduates summa cum laude and her name called up to the podium, the group of them are there to embarrass her in front of her whole class.</p><p>Son-in-laws, grandkids, an annual meeting of small town sheriffs. Jody’s hair turns greyer and greyer and before she knows it she's hanging up her gun and badge after a lifetime of service. The hunts still come to her, local mysteries and strange deaths, until the day she finds herself sprawled out on yet another broken haystack and decides that her weathered bones have probably had enough. She makes the calls then, begins passing them to hunters young and eager for the kill.</p><p>And when each and every day is past, she looks around an aging home and sees the memories of a family she didn't know she could still have after the night she thought her life was unequivocally done. </p><p> </p><p>---</p><p> </p><p>Sam is there a decade and a half from Dean's death when Jody calls the day Claire doesn’t come back.</p><p>He’s there as tan trembling hands toss lit matches onto white canvas and the tiny body slowly catches aflame. He’s there in that familiar scene, breathing blackened fumes as sobs rattle around the pyre and the smoke rises like wishes to elysium under the ever-grey.</p><p>“She always reminded me a little too much of Dean,” Jody says raspily from her place beside him, leather heels digging into the forlorn dirt under the shadow of the red rock and towering trees.</p><p>“Yeah.” Sam looks heavenward, searching. Remembers the eyes of fury on a child who only wanted back that which was stolen. Warriors forged from fire and brimstone, long lost peace—the calling undertaken.</p><p>“Me too,” he sighs deeply, breathing pale frosty mist into the silver glass sky.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <em>---</em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>“Ares barters the bodies of men for gold; he holds his balance in the contest of the spear; </em>
</p><p>
  <em>and back from Ilion to their loved ones he sends a heavy dust passed through his burning, </em>
</p><p>
  <em>a dust cried over with plentiful tears, in place of men sending well made urns with ashes."</em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>---</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>The years bring more than he could have imagined. In many ways, more than he ever expected.</p><p>He notices the urge to kill no longer thrums like adrenaline through his veins.</p><p>One early morning as sunrise peeks over his first mug of coffee for the day, Sam opens the newspaper to a spree of suspicious deaths the next state over – hearts ripped out, bodies mauled. He grabs a pen, hovers over the page, and puts it down.</p><p>It is no longer his fight.</p><p> </p><p>---</p><p> </p><p>If you asked his neighbors what they thought, they would tell you straight as they remembered. A young family from California—the nice professor and his pregnant wife and their precocious five-year old son—who had moved one early summer into the roomy house at the end of the street in this quaint little suburb off the coast of Lake Michigan.</p><p>Their kids went to school together; they’ve seen their youngest around from diapers to skateboards.</p><p>
  <em>‘Our eldest two were even in the same grade, practically best friends since they met.’</em>
</p><p>
  <em>‘And if one were to ask if there was anything strange about them?’</em>
</p><p>
  <em>They look at each other, shrugs. ‘‘We always thought that they seemed more normal than most.’</em>
</p><p>
  <em>‘No, wait! Actually, we did think Sam got sucked into one of those MLM schemes a couple years back—essential oils, that sort of thing. But then he told us he’s actually really  into burning scented herbs—turns out he’s just a real hippie.’ She shakes her head fondly. ‘Interesting background though! Heard he used to move a lot from town to town before settling in with Eileen. Some kind of anthropological government work? He doesn’t talk about it much.’</em>
</p><p><em>‘Yeah, just said it was some pretty boring stuff,’ her husband chimes before lowering his voice and conspiratorially leaning in. ‘Personally, I’ve always thought that it was a Ben-and-Chris type thing, y’know? Like, from Parks and Rec? Going around slashing budgets and saving towns? Would totally peg Sam as the type</em> <em>.'</em></p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>---</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>Steadily, surely, each one a little shorter than the last.</p><p>And then finally, on a day not unlike any other—when his creaking bones and aching joints wake him in the early hours of dawn—the realization thunders through him: he’s lived a life without Dean for longer than he had him.</p><p>These days, the memories of a retired car and the stretches of open road are but a distant mirage; a story so stunningly out of place, so fantastical, that remembering it feels like trying to catch the frontier of the old wild west—the decaying remnants of a long lost era.</p><p>Staring at the whitewashed ceiling, he listens for the rise and fall of Eileen’s breathing through the ticking of the hour, steady and firm—the same breaths that once dragged him sputtering ashore, and have anchored him on almost every morning since.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>---</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <em>“O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; </em>
</p><p>
  <em>to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; </em>
</p><p>
  <em>and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.”</em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <em>---</em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Despite himself, he ends up paying Rowena a visit probably one too many times. She was the only one left that was in the thick of it, he tells himself, but perhaps, they had become a little more than mere comrades somewhere down the line.</p><p>But like so much else, the years have a way of slipping. Until a visit every year, two, stretches to the near decades between.</p><p>Yet, when he knows his time is nigh, he shuffles out to the garage and picks up a latched box buried at the back with exactly enough ingredients for a final spell. The blade stings as it slices across his hand, blood drip—drip—dripping to the bottom of the wooden bowl. The words come precisely back to him like they never left—<em>initium ad inferna permittatur—</em>ancient ritual cascading through his soul and tipping beyond.  </p><p>His footsteps no longer follow the cadence of a young man. By memory alone, he lumbers down that royal, dimly lit hall. Not much has changed since he was here in those numb, early days after. New chandeliers, a hand-embroided carpet, an entry table decorated with precious stones carved into skulls that definitely wasn’t here on his visit prior. He pauses for a moment, deeply squints. Was that—<em>for the love of god—</em>brand new Hirst sculptures?</p><p>Two, perhaps three, new coats of dark brown varnish seal the paneled walls, bringing him some amusement imagining the face of the poor soul, probably Edmund, that got stuck with the task of doing Rowena’s menial bidding, home décor or otherwise. Not for the first time, he absentmindedly wonders if that boy’s punishment actually fit the crime. </p><p>Sam knocks.</p><p>“Come in,” smoothly slides her voice. </p><p>Sam pushes the door open to the red lady who sits before him, not a hair greyer or wrinkle deeper than on any of the other dozen days they've met. The only changes that ever indicated the shifting passage of time were the flowing gowns that morphed with the seasons—today, a coral rose dress crafted of the finest spun silk, long sleeved, Edwardian collar.</p><p>“Rowena,” he says, warm and gravelly. A distinguished gravitas that came in his sixties.</p><p>She smiles, sparkling lids and blood painted lips curled into a tiny corner.</p><p>“Samuel, I’m glad you came.”</p><p>Unlike the first time, there isn’t much to say. He talks about his kids and grandkids to fill in the gaps since he was here last. She informs him how Hell is still running better as a monarchy, its crawling days of capitalist bureaucracy far behind.</p><p>They sit in an easy silent companionship, again sipping tea and whiskey in Hell’s drawing room by the slow burning of the hour. Old foes tentatively turned lifelong friends, bound together by lost unholy nights and the unfurling threads of fate. </p><p>Mostly, he thinks, she understands better than anyone their common instinct to magic and power and <em>necessary,</em> regretful evils.</p><p>“Say hello to them for me, won’t you?” she suddenly asks, eyes never leaving the smoldering flames.</p><p>“Crowley too. If—somehow,” a strange brittle smile.</p><p>The lady who fell into the Underworld to rise as Queen.</p><p>When the embers in the fireplace quietly fizzle their dying breath, Sam knows that it is time. Slowly, like an unwary movement might shatter the universe, he raises himself off the plush red seats, gathering his leave in a body hollowing to dust—</p><p>
  <em>A meeting of kindred souls; these violent delights whom did not reach their violent ends. </em>
</p><p>“You know,” he chuckles fondly, just on the right edge of tipsy; hazily recalls a case of two rogue demons and a brothel and thinks that there’s probably a joke hidden somewhere between.</p><p>“Who would’ve thought? It’s been a pleasure, Rowena.”</p><p>There is a split second her arm twitches, almost as if to pull him to stay in this world a little longer.  She grimaces, but her voice comes out steady and sweet; melancholic in the last stanza, chariot sailing by the last hanging rays, the ripest fruit, before the marked descent into the dark winter. </p><p>“Oh Samuel," she lets out a smile, steadfast, dazzling through the ages.</p><p>"The pleasure was all mine.”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>---</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <em>“Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night,</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em> we drink you middays and mornings, we drink you at sundown…</em>
</p><p> </p><p>Down the back of a seedy alley, a bearded man stumbles from brick to brick, beer bottle dragging noisily against the decrepit walls. A lady suspiciously stares as she pulls her jacket tighter around herself and speeds by, hearing strange, otherworldly mutterings about demons and angels, a boy Nephilim and… pain-in-the-ass Winchesters?</p><p>Compelled by an unfamiliar force of sympathy, she turns to pull a twenty out of her scaled purse, hastily shoving it into his fingers even as goosebumps erupt across her alabaster skin.</p><p>“Good luck,” she mutters sidling quickly away.</p><p>By the time the lady braves a look behind, the man had seemingly vanished into the black cloak of an otherwise ordinary Monday night.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>And he shall be cursed to forever wander the land, east of Eden.</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>…w<em>e drink and we drink you.”</em></p><p>
  
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <em>---</em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>You cannot say, or guess, for you know only</em>
</p><p>
  <em>A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>And the dead three gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>And the dry stone no sound of water.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>---</em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>In the first days of Heaven, all Dean does is drive. He gets onto that open road and floors it for as long and as far as he could go; rides like he’ll finally outpace the shadows whispering in his mind.</p><p>He feels the wind in his face chasing down those winding hills, drinks a beer on a bench by the glassy mirror lake. There’s a feeling of guilt that gnaws in his chest, like maybe he’s supposed to be doing <em>something</em>. But no danger ever comes—no monster nor demon nor angel—until he’s left skipping rocks and kicking pebbles just to stave off the recurring boredom.</p><p>Eventually, he knows he’ll end up knocking on his parents’ door. He’ll breathe in Mary’s scent and feel John clap him on his shoulder.</p><p>It’s been more than a decade since he saw John last. The last time, Dean hadn’t even been twenty-five, barely ever lived a life out from under his father’s thumb. A long series of orders and coordinates, a soldier sent off to hunt—but he is not that kid anymore, and the years since have taken its toll.</p><p>Yet, there’s a boy that never stopped longing for the dreams of his family—the house of cards that tumbled as Yellow Eyes huffed and puffed and blew it all down.</p><p>Even the father John was after the fire—on his better days.</p><p>Up here, Dean thinks they have a shot.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>---</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <em>"The gods are fallen and all safety gone. </em>
</p><p><em>And there is one sure thing about the fall of gods: </em> <em>they do not fall a little; </em></p><p>
  <em>they crash and shatter or sink deeply into green much. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>It is a tedious job to build them up again; they never quite shine. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>And the child's world is never quite whole again. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>It is an aching kind of growing."</em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>---</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>He doesn’t tell them when he first plans on visiting. But one warm evening, when he finally feels ready to meet even as his gut is throbbing with trepidation, Dean finds himself pulling in to the front of his parents’ house. With three nervous raps to the hardwood door, he waits.</p><p>Mary is the one to pull it open, the delighted yell of his name as she pulls him close.</p><p>“I’m sorry I took so long.” He buries himself into his mother’s embrace.</p><p>“Sweetheart, it’s just so good to see you again.”</p><p>Behind her, the crescendo of footsteps thud up the hall, the gruff face of John Winchester making its way over.</p><p>“Who is—“</p><p>“Son,” he whispers almost reverently, his father in flesh and bone. As Mary takes a step back, he finds himself pulled into John’s arms.</p><p>“It’s good to see you, Dad,” Dean mumbles into his shoulder.</p><p>Not for the first time, Dean muses at his life’s strange turns that his death came closer to his Mom. </p><p>“You got here at a perfect time,” she tells Dean, a familiar quirk in her cheek as they make their way into the dining room where Dean’s gaze pans hungrily over the roasted chicken and mashed potatoes. </p><p>Mary leans in to conspiratorially whisper. “Don’t worry, its Heaven Express.”</p><p>John takes a seat at Mary’s nudging as she pulls Dean to walk with her to grab a plate from the kitchen. Whether she sensed his nervousness to be alone with his father or if she just wanted a minute alone with her son, Dean couldn’t say, but was grateful for the reprieve nonetheless.</p><p>Later that evening, after food and wine, when all that’s left are the three Winchesters and a half emptied bottle of whiskey on ice.</p><p>“I’m sorry you didn’t get a chance at normal, after everything,” says Mary softly, delicate.</p><p>“It’s okay,” he lets out. “Seriously, it’s fine. I, uh, I don’t think I could’ve ever really left hunting behind. And without God’s protection, something was gonna get me sooner or later.”</p><p>Dean shakes his head in disbelief. “Vamp-mimes and a damn nail though. And Sammy, he shouldn’t have had to—”</p><p>“From what I hear, Sammy’ll be fine, Dean.” John cuts in with disconcerting reassurance. A pregnant pause, the trio sipping their drinks in foreign silence.</p><p>Dean finally breaks it with a shallow chuckle, for the first in a long time, allows the memories of Lisa and Ben to seep through. Warm Sunday mornings, barbeques and picnics with the kid at the park. Having something to come back to while treading that never-ending edge of paranoia.</p><p>“Was never too good at apple pie, anyway.” Dean’s eyes meet John’s in something like acknowledgement. </p><p>With a twitched smile, Mary gathers the empty plates and rises from her seat on the couch, sensing there’s a conversation that needs to be held without her present. “Gonna take a shower, boys. Don’t wait up.”</p><p>Nearly an hour later, she makes her way back toward the room where she left them, towel running through her damp hair. She hears the quiet but travelling voices of the two men through the rails of the steps. A conversation she shouldn’t be privy—the barest glimpse into the hamstrung lives of a son she didn’t raise and a husband she didn’t marry.</p><p>Some days it’s easy to forget about the years—the adolescence missed.</p><p>A child’s relationship to their parent, but perhaps this one in particular, is always a perplexing mix—a messy, complicated thing borne from a lifetime of love and fear and hate—of hero worship and seething anger, a kaleidoscope of memories rolled into the lines of his father’s face. </p><p>“Dean, I never got a chance to say. I know I did some pretty messed up stuff. To Sammy, but especially to you.” </p><p>“Dad—”</p><p>He has an involuntary flash of drunken rampages and penance hunts; yellowing bruises, the punched through drywall of a rundown motel room.</p><p>“No, Dean. I never wanted—”</p><p>Even now sat casually around his waist—the scorching stripes of John’s thick leather belt that came raining down his ass. Cash that always fell a little too short, the unappetizing slop of instant meals—</p><p>“Dad, it’s fine—“</p><p>
  <em>No words for him but take care of your brother.</em>
</p><p>“I’m sorry, son.” Dean barely manages to gulp down the rest of his drink without choking, the whiskey burn a stinging comfort. “I know I wasn’t always a good father. Hell, most of the time you did more parenting than I did—for me and Sam. But you need to know that I’m so proud of you, my boy. For everything.”</p><p>A heavy silence, rain patters steadily against the roof, the glassy panes. </p><p>“Thanks, Dad.” Dean says, voice coming out wet and shaky. “For what it’s worth, it was a long time ago.”</p><p>John’s rueful eyes look up, breathes the familiar lie. “You were always such a good kid.” </p><p>She didn’t realize she had moved but Mary now stood frozen on the last stone stair—of all the things she never wanted, never dreamed—nails cut like crescents into the skin of her wrist.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>---</p><p>
  
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>“Men have forgotten this truth,” said the fox.</em>
</p><p>
  <em> “But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.”</em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>---</em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Seeing Charlie whole again was a spellbinding relief.</p><p>He tries to apologize the first time they speak, only for her to cut him off with flashing eyes and a single <em>don’t.</em></p><p>They fall back into their easy rhythm: hangouts and game nights and easy laughter over buckets of beer.</p><p>They’re on a couch in the Roadhouse on yet another Friday. Faces familiar and unfamiliar litter the somewhat mundane scene—a man passed out on the pool table, a blonde girl cozied up to the crook of Charlie’s elbow.</p><p>He’s in the midst of an anecdote about a magical coin in a tacky wishing fountain when Dean’s ears catch the faint rustle of wings—too quiet if you weren’t already waiting for it. His lips fall quickly shut, head instinctually whipping around as the doors of the establishment swing wide open.</p><p>No one here pays much attention to the newcomer’s arrival, cursory glances before going on about their business—but Dean’s world has frozen.</p><p>The man’s eyes hungrily rake over the bar’s sparse occupants.</p><p>Beams hanging low on the horizon stream viscous honey light past the wooden arch to cast the evening’s waning shadow; a lady’s voice comes whining from the jukebox that has seen some better days—</p><p>
  <em>Don’t they know it’s the end of the world? It ended when you said goodbye...</em>
</p><p>Gazes meet like the collision of two planets; somewhere out there, a child opens their eyes.</p><p>“Cas?” he whispers, and it sounds like rebirth and promised beginnings.</p><p>The corner of the guest’s arctic eyes crinkle up, smile rising like the break of dawn over roaring oceans, tempest-tossed. It is the tender relief at the end of an adventure, the final voyage to—</p><p>“Hello, Dean.”</p><p>From depths below, a voice unmistakably rises, carried by the currents across a sun soaked room.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <em>---</em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>“Our wills and fates do so contrary run, that our devices still are overthrown; </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own.”</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>---</em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  
</p><p>Castiel rides shotgun as they cruise down never-ending roads,</p><p>Sometimes, they speak. They skirt around their last minutes together, but Dean tells him his version of the events after— Michael and Lucifer, God, Jack—saving the universe.</p><p>A vampire nest and his back thrown out onto a damned nail.</p><p>Castiel eyebrows jump up in disbelief. “A nail got you? Dean Winchester was brought down by a nail?”</p><p>Of all the myriad ways he had foreseen Dean’s coming; how gods adore their twisted, dramatic ironies—even as irony fades, in the light of death.   </p><p>“Shut up, Cas,” Dean glowers with a scowl. “Not my fault some dumb son of a bitch left a giant fuckin’ nail hanging out the damn pillar.”</p><p>Castiel doesn’t bother hiding his snicker. “Bet you wish Gog and Magog got us now.”</p><p>“Flintstones or Jesus, huh?” he deadpans, foot toeing the accelerator. “Great. Just fuckin’ great—”</p><p> </p><p>---</p><p> </p><p>Spring up here comes long and bright, a far green country, all budding shoots and the endless sky. They bask in the thawing warmth by the hood of the Impala. They explore, they drive.</p><p>Meandering eyes observe through the hum of their shared silences, crackling radio playing the whining riffs of <em>Nirvana, Zeppelin</em>—the biting breeze that rushes in whistling tunes.</p><p>They avoid conversations they aren’t quite prepared to untangle.</p><p>
  <em>I want to know you, as to be known by you.</em>
</p><p>So they start with the easy, the grounding; blind leading the blind, stumbling backwards just for a way to move.</p><p>Castiel offhandedly tells him of life as heaven’s soldier. He recounts skirmishes and battalions, wars waged at the dawn of existence; the sprouting roots of ancient myth and legend.</p><p>Dean listens with rapt attention, makes him pick his favorites eras, centuries, even when Castiel denies any preference. Prods about the events of history he sat behind the curtain or as part of the audience: kings and queens, conquerors and emperors. Those risen only to fall, the spinning world under his vigilance—</p><p>The litany of vessels that once worked for Heaven.</p><p>“So, what you’re saying is that you were totally a hot chick,” Dean laughs, eyebrows suggestively perking up.</p><p>Without missing a beat, Castiel gestures to himself sardonically, all matter of fact. “Dean, if this vessel truly makes you uncomfortable, I could easi—”</p><p>“No.” it comes out too quickly, almost shyly, fingers curling into tighter into the wheel and cutting him off midsentence.</p><p>“I like—damn it," heat creeps up the base of his neck. “Fuck. Just… <em>stay</em>.”</p><p>Looking out of the window, a smug smile crosses over Castiel’s face.</p><p> </p><p>---</p><p> </p><p>And then the easy runs out; the drives continue.</p><p>So they turn to muse over crappy fathers, orders, how duty blinds as it binds.</p><p>The angel asks questions as if he wants to pick apart Dean’s soul. And Dean, to his credit—gives, he fills him up with all he wants to know.</p><p>He tells him of stories from growing up on the road, the adventures of him and Sam that unfolded before Castiel came storming in. Yellow Eyes, Pagan gods, a dormant Shtriga, <em>fuckin’ Gabriel even trapped me in a Groundhog Day death loop. </em></p><p>Sometimes, the nastier details slip without notice—the darker days—all that they've done in the name of family and sacrifice; that even blood can be sharpened to cut and to slice.</p><p>Battle-born in the throes of violence—they’ll bring things up, almost-but-not-quite jokingly, about the ways they’ve twisted into one another. Demanded over and over for the unaskable favors. How whatever they are—whatever they’ve been through, has forged them a bond deeper than trust, or friendship, or even <em>love</em>. </p><p>In many ways, it’s not too different from their time on Earth. In many ways, it’s all the difference in the world.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>---</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>“Don't urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Your people will be my people and your God my God. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, </em>
</p><p>
  <em>if even death separates you and me."</em>
</p><p> </p><p>---</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>“Dean.” Castiel begins haltingly some unknowable time later on a long beachy afternoon. They’re lying on a picnic blanket by shaded cliffs near the white shores, beer cooler dripping with icy condensation, soaked to the bone with sweat and sea brim. “Perhaps, we should speak about the bunker.”</p><p>Dean lazily peeks at him from beneath his eyelashes, sunlight baking his skin a golden brown. “What’s there to say? You said you love me. I obviously feel… something.”</p><p>“Something?” he raises a rather unconvinced eyebrow.  </p><p>“Something,” Dean confirms cheekily, sitting up to face Castiel. A moment of hesitance passes before he rambles.</p><p>“Look, I’m no good at this stuff. All this touchy-feely crap and shit. But what you said in there—about being happy— we were fighting a war for so long that I never sat down and thought about after, let alone about happiness and what that would mean but... You make me happy, Cas. Always have. And my head’s a mess and I’m still trying to sort all my crap out but... you’re here, and I—I’ve always been better when you’re with me.”</p><p>He swallows again, takes a deep breath. “Besides, with guys I’d never… I mean my parents, and especially Dad… What I’m saying is that they don’t know anything. Yet. And to be honest I didn’t… I mean, maybe a little... but not really, you—”</p><p>Dean’s nervous rambling is cut off when Castiel, propelled by some newfound courage, closes the gap between them and presses their lips together for a  lingering stretch of a moment.</p><p>It’s perhaps not a kiss as much as an unanswered question—the tentative hope of something permanent.</p><p>Castiel leans back satisfied, contemplating Dean who is staring short circuited, stunned into silence.</p><p>“Sexuality is moot in the face of both angelhood and eternity, Dean.”</p><p>Dean’s reddened face inelegantly snorts, head thrown backwards to chortle at the cloudless sky.</p><p>“I’ll figure it out, Cas.” he promises with eyes sparkling azure and sea green, all sincere mirth and earnest conviction. “Just… give me a little time.”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>---</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <em>"Whatever souls were made of, his and mine are the same"</em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>"So call me by your name and I’ll call you by mine."</em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>---</em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  
</p><p>Somewhere on Earth, an abandoned playground falls further into ruin.</p><p>“Heaven and Hell remain in lockdown. The planes of existence need time to reset, rebuild with the armistice in place,” Castiel explains one night over Chinese takeout by a curb side parking lot, red lantern glowing by the storefront, two steaming bowls of chicken and rice.</p><p>“You think the peace’ll actually hold?”</p><p>“About as much as humans held after the first world war.”</p><p>“So, it’ll happen again,” Dean scoffs in disbelief.</p><p>“Eventually,” Castiel agrees gravely. “The archangels may be dead and Rowena may be amenable, but even if it takes centuries or eons, war will find its way.”</p><p>He quiets then. “Dean. Until that day comes, trust that I will do everything in my power to prevent it. Heaven will not fall again on my watch.”</p><p>A disturbed wave sweeps across Dean’s pensive face before settling onto coy lashes, a faint chesire grin.</p><p>“Well, well, <em>we</em><em>llll</em><em>ll…</em> whad’ya know, caught myself a big shot angel,” he rolls out in a long southern drawl, pulls forth his best sleazy John Wayne.</p><p>“Please,” Castiel begs with a long suffering sigh even as the fond twinkle in his eyes betray his amusement. “No more cowboys, Dean.”</p><p>“Cowboys are awesome, dude. C’mon!” </p><p>“Not everyone shares your… <em>proclivities</em> to the genre.”</p><p>His eyes widen, looking slightly caught out as if it was ever a well kept secret.</p><p>“Guess there’s just no accounting for taste,” Dean’s tongue darts spindly out, softening. “Y’know, if it came down to it, I would fight too. I mean, I don’t know what I could do, being dead and all—Jack might have to zap me some angel upgrades. But, I would leave Heaven if I had to. I would fight.”</p><p>
  <em>For you, like you always did for me. </em>
</p><p>Castiel stares at him speechlessly until Dean is visibly squirming, framed beneath amber glow and luminescent neon lights. <em>Never had he thought…</em></p><p>“Dean…”</p><p>“What?” he bites out, all edges and break.</p><p>
  <em>Your existence astounds.</em>
</p><p>“…I did like the cowboy hat you gave me.”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>---</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>“He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun, </em>
</p><p>
  <em>yet he saw her, like the sun, even without looking.”</em>
</p><p> </p><p>---</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>There are days when Castiel leaves to attend to Heaven and Dean is left in a house that seems a little too big, too empty.</p><p>To distract himself, Dean begins to pick up old books he used to sneak between hunts, when Sammy was quietly sleeping in the other room and John drifting a state away. <em>Vonnegut, Bradbury, Kerouac, </em>they creep their way to fill his oak crafted shelves. The leather recliner by the window facing the western hemisphere quickly becomes well-worn, hours spent nestled like a cat curled under evening sun. </p><p>When the mood strikes, he teaches himself how to cook. Nothing out of a tin. Like the first civilized humans, he learns to pull ingredients from the loamy earth, slicing and sizzling into food cast over the heat of open flame.</p><p>Their collection of vinyl’s grow in the corner. More classics, a Taylor Swift hidden at the back of the shelf, Dean’s low voice crooning along to his favorite Bob Seger’s.</p><p>With strewn out knick-knacks and furniture built under Dean’s calloused hands, their home begins to look like just that.</p><p>And just as Cas’ absence tethers on too long, the once fallen angel always makes his way back. To the seat next to him, to the crook of his arms, and eventually, to the spaces hidden between his lips.</p><p>The road is new and unearthed, but together they feel the settling of their restless souls—they learn.</p><p> </p><p>---</p><p> </p><p>Dean realizes one morning that he’s begun to memorize the contours of Cas’ body—the hardened planes, the lines that dips and levels as he traces with feathered lips. Under Dean, Castiel learns how to fall apart, unravel, to lose himself in touches that burn like embers splayed across his skin—all carnal need, and <em>wanting </em>and primordial sin.</p><p>Castiel sometimes recalls fragments of walking around ancient Athens, midday desert sun, past sweltering workshops where the heat would cling to walls like sweat clung to their skin. He’d often pause to watch the craftsmen toil then, day after day, transfixed by the sheer effort of carving beauty from solid stone—caught in the irony of wondering if they had truly <em>known </em>of the holy muse and the divinity of which they spoke.</p><p>In Dean, Castiel uncovers the secrets: the sensitive patch behind his ear, the juncture of his neck, by the bottom of his navel. He learns the way Dean will squirm and writhe if his lips nip and bite into his skin with a certain precision. He maps constellations of scars that tell tales of reckless bar fights to rabid ghouls to<em> a dumb bet with Sammy. </em>Nails that if they scrape lightly enough across his hip will inevitably cause fit after fit of involuntary giggles.</p><p>The vulnerability of undoing another, to be completely bared open; the languid passing of an overcast afternoon—</p><p>It’s everything he never dared to dream of with Dean curled close to him after, the thin fabric of Cas’ shirt loosely twisted into the grip of his palm. </p><p> </p><p>---</p><p> </p><p>Yet, even Heaven has its blips, its complications—days lost before they even began, nightmares that come crawling as they part.</p><p>But here, as his breaths come out short and his eyelids come wrenching open, he finds there is solace in knowing that his family lives by the bend up the road, and a man he trusts sat in the rumpled nest of sweat-soaked sheets.</p><p>On the worst nights, Castiel places his fingers over the handprint branded into Dean’s shoulder and pulls him against his chest, wrapping Dean tightly until there is no space left between them and all he knows, all of his existence, boils down to the heat thrumming from the angel’s embrace.</p><p>Dean counts his breaths then, backwards from ten, each time letting the air fill and reverberate through the cavities of his lungs. When he finally reaches zero, he forces his muscles to bleed their tension, and searches for the comfort in the quiet of his surrender.</p><p>“Want to talk about it?” Castiel would eventually whisper as he notices Dean settle back in.</p><p>Sometimes, all of Dean’s response would be the muffled shaking of his head. But when the nightmares get too much, too loud, he’ll ashamedly admit things he’s barely admitted to himself—all his basest fears—the misplaced guilt that had pushed him to make a deal with the devil, those forty long wretched years, the glacial fits of his father’s temper that often sat right next to Alistair.</p><p>Mostly, he dreams of the terror that took hold at the thought of being buried for eternity with Michael. The dread that had sprouted and only grew. How he knew, better than anyone, the drawn out ways in which the archangel would have relished in breaking him—and lord knows, he breaks.</p><p>Castiel would lift his chin then, fingers wrapped around the edge, eyes swimming with all of the absolution he knew how to hold.</p><p> </p><p>---</p><p> </p><p>Then there are nights where Dean finds himself groping his way to the living room by the calling of the faint buzz of a movie playing—most likely the last once they watched—as Castiel stares blankly at the glossy screen.</p><p>Wordlessly, Dean slips into the space beside him.</p><p><em>You okay? </em>He silently asks as his hands slinks its way between them, grounding touch curling around the angel’s knee.</p><p>“Fine,” he murmurs without turning, fingers winding to fiddle with Dean’s.</p><p>“Flashbacks?”</p><p>Castiel grumbles. “Of a sort.”</p><p>He doesn’t expand on it, but Dean knows Cas’ demons almost as well as his own these days. </p><p>Dean is careful as he leans back into the cushions. With a tenderness that sometimes still surprises him, Dean extricates his hand to pull gently at Cas, guides him backwards until they’re pressed shoulder to shoulder, skin to skin.</p><p>“It’s not your fault, whatever you saw,” Dean’s voice comes out parched and raspy, soft like prayers are when they count.</p><p>Castiel huffs to the ceiling, trying not to close his eyes. “Pot, kettle.”</p><p>He feels Dean’s silent laughter buried through the shifting vibrations in his back; the tangle of limbs as they settle into the give of their couch.</p><p>“Tell me,” Dean says eventually, when all is still but for the fingers lightly treading over Cas’ scapula. “What’re your wings like?”</p><p>Castiel freezes—this is not a question that he’s ever had to answer, to even think about—how does he explain something that just <em>is?</em></p><p>“I don’t… It’s a difficult question, like asking a human how they know to breathe…” Castiel trails off.</p><p>“Try.”</p><p>Choosing his words carefully, Castiel haltingly begins. “They’re… wide ocean storms, impending hurricanes—hotter than the eruption of the fieriest volcano—electricity, the strike of lightning—energy so holy and pure that it would make Hiroshima look like child’s play. But perfect, Dean. So perfect—like everything beautiful and nothing hurt.”</p><p>Dean’s hold tightens fractionally.</p><p>“Sounds like you’re worse for the planet than global warming,” he finally lets out facetiously, gently needling.</p><p>Castiel lightly pinches the flesh of Dean’s thigh to a muted yelp; gratefully realizes that the flow of memories have temporarily ceased.</p><p>With Dean’s fingers continuing to move in soothing circles around Castiel’s shoulders, breath whispering by the nape of his neck—they sit together, rocked into the early morning hours by the mindless flickering of the television into the dark corners of the room.</p><p> </p><p>They grow and they heal in this Eden of memory and desire.</p><p>They are warriors given time.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>---</p><p>
  
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>“She always remembered the silvery, peaceful beauty and fragrant calm of that night. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>It was the last night before sorrow touched her life; </em>
</p><p>
  <em>and no life is ever quite the same again when once that cold, sanctifying touch has been laid upon it.</em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <em>---</em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>On the day Castiel tells him that Claire has arrived, he is hit by a wave of overlapping emotion.</p><p>“She never really got out, huh?”</p><p>“No,” he replies solemnly, where heavy lies the crown. Yet, he looks to Dean with a searching gaze: there is a softness to his features now, harsh edges and entrenched scowl mellowed by the unburdening of the years. His soul which for as long as the angel has known, has never weighed quite this light, shone this <em>golden</em>.</p><p>“But, perhaps,” he adds thoughtfully, pointedly catches Dean’s furrowed stare. “An observation may be made that some fare better in Heaven."</p><p>They are there to meet her at the entrance. She looks older than when they knew her, younger than the thirty-odd years she survived.</p><p>“Dean!” she cries happily. “Castiel!”</p><p>“Hey, Claire.”</p><p>“Hello, Claire,” they smile in unison.</p><p>There are hugs to go around as she is ushered into the Impala, explanations of where they are, snippets of gushing news about the living that arrive. <em>Alex and her husband just had a second kid. Sam and Eileen a third. Jody picked up knitting of all things after she retired. Donna just got a hot new hunter boyfriend. And Kaia… </em></p><p><em>It’s alright,</em> they tell her. They’ll have all the hours in the world to listen, to pry.</p><p>“My parents…” her voice comes with some trepidation. “Are they?”</p><p>For the first time in a long time, Castiel turns from his seat in the front to look straight into Claire with guileless eyes. He gestures to a cozy modern cottage coming up with the lessening distance, almost hidden by the grassy farmlands and rolling plains.</p><p>“They've been waiting.”</p><p>The midnight car finally pulls up to front of the winding cobblestone path, lined by sweet little rows of variegated tulips.</p><p>Stoney walls and red brick, the rosy afternoon light catches on the edge of the chimney, the opened windows; a shimmering shadow settled peacefully over the yard.</p><p>Her features lights up with the force of a supernova.  Blindly, she’s throwing open the passenger door and racing off, waving as she rushes through the unlocked gate.</p><p>“See you later!” her voice carries with the warm breeze, and for a passing moment Dean swears that he sees the face of the child he first met, untainted by loss and just as fearless. He blinks, raises his arm, blonde curls billowing further and further into the distance.</p><p>They stay just long enough to see the front door open, the faint sounds of delight right on their tail.</p><p>Homebound, warm fingers wordlessly reach for his as the sky overhead fades to a soft dizzying pink, and they bump along unending fields of gold.  </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>---</p><p> </p><p><em>“Thestor’s son, </em> <em>the clearest by far of all the seers,</em></p><p><em>s</em> <em>o who scan the flight of birds.</em></p><p> </p><p><em> He knew all things that are, </em> <em>all things that are past,</em></p><p>
  <em> and all that are to come.”</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>---</em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Days up here stretch and collapse. The cycle of the seasons rinses and repeats, and before he knows, it is his fifty-fourth summer beneath Heaven’s infinite skies.</p><p>It is a warm languid evening beneath the haze of the evening sun hanging low and ripe on the horizon; the incessant buzzing of cicadas and croaking of frogs harmonizing between swaying stalks of wheat.</p><p>Dean is tinkering with the Impala, hands stained and greasy, tray of tools organized neatly beside him. A shovel sits against by the garden hose, fresh tomatoes hanging on the vine off wooden trellises.</p><p>The scratching of a <em>Rolling Stones</em> record wafts alongside simmering pasta sauce to find its way out the rustic kitchen and open screen. Through its framed glimpse, Cas idly lounges in lazy Sunday glory, occasionally rising to stir the pot with a wooden spoon.</p><p>Recent times have been appreciatively quiet: Heaven back in order, few demon flare-ups, relative peace maintained among the humans.</p><p>
  <em>And so have they. </em>
</p><p>Dean hears the creaking of the front gate before a teenager in a denim jacket comes into view around the corner of the house. </p><p>The passing years have done the boy well—walking proof that there’s more to fate than the circumstances we find ourselves born; that destiny can be a changing, malleable thing. </p><p>In his hands, he holds a book opened to its final page.</p><p>“Hi, Dean,” he says, walking up just close enough to interestedly peek into the hood of the Impala, almost as if this was just another day long ago at the bunker.</p><p>“Jack!” he calls out. “Hey, kiddo. How’s it going?”</p><p>Jack shrugs diplomatically, looking up to him. “Oh, you know. This and that.”</p><p>“Right,” Dean huffs with a wry smile. “You staying for dinner? Could call Mom over. Cas’ll definitely be happy to see you.”</p><p>Eyes quickly lighting up, the kid delightedly nods. “I’d love to.”</p><p>Dean chuckles back at him, gestures to the book Jack is still holding into his direction. “That for me?”</p><p>“Right, yes, of course. The actual reason I came to visit,” he says handing it over briskly.</p><p>Dean's eyes widen as they scan across the page drinking in its every printed word.</p><p>He swallows. “Is this…?”</p><p>Jack’s throat bobs in its place. </p><p> </p><p>---</p><p> </p><p>The week that follows drags to be quite possibly the longest in his existence.</p><p>“I’ll see you later, Cas.” Dean says distractedly as he pulls the driver’s door open, head buzzing with frayed nerves and decades’ worth of anticipation.</p><p>“Drive safely, Dean.”</p><p>“Right. Because—fuck! Where are my keys? Because dying is a huge problem up here.”</p><p>“Dean.”</p><p>He waves a hand around as he lowers himself into the seat, the other rummaging through his pockets. “Got it, don’t die. Don’t worry.”</p><p>“Dean,” Castiel says again, deeper this time, leaning over the rolled down window of the Impala.</p><p>Still distracted, Dean runs his fingers through his overgrown hair while absentmindedly fiddling around with the knobs on the radio. “Mmm?”</p><p>Cas reaches over to grab his jaw, firmly turning Dean around to face him. “Dean, listen to me. I’m looking forward to seeing Sam as well. But, I would appreciate it if you could both make it back in one piece without me playing doctor to whoever ends up as <em>Humpty-Dumpty</em>.”</p><p>Dean chortles. Even after all this time, the novelty of Cas using references is not lost to him.</p><p>“Yeah,” he mumbles, tension deflating. “Sorry, just nervous—“</p><p>“I know,” Castiel murmurs, end of his thumb gently rubbing soothing circles into Dean’s cheek, breath caught unawares as coppery light clings to the tips of his features. “I miss him too, Dean. As I’m sure he misses us. So stop fretting. Go—meet him.”</p><p>He lets out a long breath, a reassurance he didn’t even know he needed; hand coming to curl over Cas’.</p><p>“Thanks,” Dean mutters. “We still at Mom and Dad’s tonight?”</p><p>“Yes, so quickly. <em>Go</em>. I’ll see you when you’re back.”</p><p>“I’m going—I’m going, I swear.” He steals a moment to turn his head and press lingering lips against the pulse of Castiel’s wrist. “See you later, Cas.”</p><p>“Dean?”</p><p>“Yeah, Cas?”</p><p>Twinkling cerulean eyes hold up a slim pair of keys. “You’ll probably need these.”</p><p> </p><p>---</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Dean drives as safely as could be expected of him.</p><p>The seemingly endless road gives way to the view of a bridge, stretched over a winding river carved down the sunken depths of a cloudy valley.</p><p>He slams the door shut as he exits the Impala, breathes in the smell of damp dirt and pine trees. The light breeze that tickles at his skin is almost unnoticeable compared to the heaving sensation of his stomach trying to crawl up his throat and unburden itself all over the ravine.</p><p><em>Breathe, </em>he tells himself. <em>It’s just Sammy, breathe.</em> </p><p>A wet crunching of leaves jolts Dean out of his reverie.</p><p>From his side, Dean watches—caught somewhere between nervousness and excitement—as a slightly hunched figure appears from the looking glass through the shimmering cloak of the forest; the world’s curtain rolling back at the end of the stage.</p><p>The man that walks into his vision is at once instinctually familiar and an utter stranger.</p><p>He’s shorter than he remembered, bones weighed down by gravity; floppy hair turned to a fine silver-grey. There’s wrinkles that line his face and a gait dictated by the knobbiness of his knees; drooping puppy eyes that have wizened with age.</p><p>Dean feels the bile rise up to the back his mouth because <em>he does not know this man</em>, <em>this imposter</em>. The panic builds and builds and just as he thinks he’s about to hurl—the old man’s lips tilts into a crooked smile, the glistening air shifts, and he <em>looks </em>at Dean.</p><p>As the man takes his first step over the bridge, something both strange and remarkable happens before Dean’s eyes. Bit by bit, and then all at once—the years that had accumulated between them gradually sifts and distorts and slips off his weathered frame. With every step, time is dialed back like the gradual rewinding of a clock, until the man that stands before him waiting, a quivering hair’s breadth, could be none other than <em>Sammy, </em>the baby brother he raised.</p><p>Sam has lived a lifetime without Dean. There’s so many—days, weeks<em>, years—</em>so much he has to tell of the indecisions and revisions, the tender aches and overwhelming griefs. There are children, friends—family that Dean has never met—time that took as much as it gave.</p><p>Yet, all that quietly strips away on that halfway bridge as Dean drags him forward in in a grip that’s almost painful, and Sam is clawing, stumbling—throwing his arms around his brother—as quick and easy as falling into the wisps of a distant dream.</p><p>For a lingering moment, his fingers clutch like they’ll catch the trail ends of fireworks and blazing comets—once upon—if only—</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>A yellowed creaking motel door gently rattles open: Sammy is all of ten, and his big brother has returned to him.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>---</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>There is a time for everything,<br/>
    and a season for every activity under the heavens:</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>a time to be born and a time to die,<br/>
    a time to plant and a time to uproot,</em>
</p><p>
  <em><br/>
     a time to kill and a time to heal,<br/>
    a time to tear down and a time to build,</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>a time to weep and a time to laugh,<br/>
    a time to mourn and a time to dance,</em>
</p><p>
  <em><br/>
     a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,<br/>
    a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,</em>
</p><p>
  <em><br/>
     a time to search and a time to give up,<br/>
    a time to keep and a time to throw away,</em>
</p><p>
  <em><br/>
     a time to tear and a time to mend,<br/>
    a time to be silent and a time to speak,</em>
</p><p><br/>
<em>     a time to love and a time to hate,</em><br/>
<em>    a time for war and a time for peace.</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>---</em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em> <span class="u">Extra: </span> </em>
</p><p>
  <em>[Some months after Claire entered Heaven]</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Dad, Castiel… Castiel… Dad?” her voice trailing off as the two identical men stare unamused at each other.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“This is weird isn’t it, Dean?” Claire huffs, arms crossed tightly in front of her.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Dean, who had been whipping his head back and forth in mild bewilderment. “Seriously, dude. We might need tiny colored ribbons.”</em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>a love letter to an end of an era. </p><p>my sincere attempt to prove the ending was conceptually great, just terribly executed. believe it or not, i was only gonna do the destiel hello scene but 8k words later and here we are and destiel basically took over the whole fic like they took over the show. whoops. </p><p>i've given this show a lot of shit throughout the years but really, its been a constant comfort in my life as well as one of the rare few that inspired my love for writing as a kid.</p><p>so genuinely spn, to all the writers, actors, crew, producers - thank you for the past decade.</p><p>ps. would love to hear other people’s thoughts of the ending.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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